Raise Your Levels

I had a conversation last night with my wife about fitness. During that conversation I mentioned that when I was big, I was happy.  On a scale of 1-10, I’d say that in general I was like a 9.  I could have been a tiny bit happier, but life was good.

I was shown how out of shape I was, at our one training session in March as explained here.  I was still happy, but I was now acutely aware of what I was unable to do.  Last night we used hands to visualize two things.  One hand was general happiness level with fitness, and all the things that entails.  The other was happiness with sitting and not doing much and eating cake or chips or whatever.

Once I was shown that my fitness needed to increase it was a test of my will.  I had to make the fitness choices, where once they were on par with relaxing, I had to make it a priority.  And for a long time that did not make me happy.  Hard work, alone in the gym is difficult to do.  Eventually I lost 30 pounds, bought myself a new hockey sweater, and realized that all this fitness was awesome.

Doing fitness things had made me aware of what I was capable of doing, I was happier for it.  How could that be?  I was already 9/10?  I had to change the happiness scale because I had raised the level.  Now I was a happiness of 17/20.  My pre workout self, now aware of this new level would have only been 9/20.

The only issue, was that at that stage, relaxing choices were no good anymore.  I knew this higher plain existed, and I wanted to go there.  Eating poorly no longer appealed to me, and sitting and playing Nintendo alone could no longer make me happy.  In many, many ways this is a really good thing.  But as far as sitting in front of the TV, eating and playing video games went, it was not.

Here is the Great thing though.  At this point you might think that you only have 3 happiness points left to go because we are at 17/20, but you are wrong.  Here is the beauty of the whole thing, once I had reached fitness type levels, I had to eat more.  And where I am at now I workout in the morning on the weekend (and some through the week too) but then I have to rest, and eat and relax so my body can recover.

Now I get the happiness of being able to do so much great stuff, and satisfaction from being able to sit and relax and have bigger family meals or a few chips or whatever.  A day where I work out hard, is a day where nearly anything is on the menu.

I would say that now I’m at about 29/30.  A long way away from the pervious which would now rate as merely 9/30!  I finished explaining all of that and I said I couldn’t put it any other way, and that I wish I could give her the experience so that she could have that realization.  But I can’t and it wouldn’t be beneficial if I could really, I think one has to come to that realization for themselves for it to mean anything.  But believe me, the hard choices at the beginning are worth it.  Eventually those choices become a lifestyle, and then they get put where they are, an indulgence.  And who doesn’t really love indulgence!  The days were I can do it all, like yesterday (workout, karate, massage, baked mac and cheese comfort food dinner with cake for dessert, play hockey) then you just are over the top.  Level 35/30! Happy, happy, happy.